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Easter Special! Egg Dying With Silk!

We know that Easter is coming up this weekend, but we wanted to give all of you last-minute folks an alternative way to dye your Easter eggs!

Fancy up your eggs using pieces of silk! Mary, the manager at our Kona location, recently held a class where she taught attendees all about silk-dying Easter eggs. She’s sent over the instructions, along with a few photographs, so you can do it at home!

How to dye eggs with silk fabric

A basket full of shredded paper for “straw”, and a bounty of colorful eggs! (Photo Credit: Mary)

Dampen silk swatch to help it cling to the egg shell more closely to better transfer the dye. (We had bowls with white vinegar to dampen the silk.) You may also wrap lots of thread around the silk around the egg, to keep the fabric close as can. Theoretically swatches can be used more than once, but this may depend on how thick the fabric is or how much dye is in the print.

Showing the beginning step of wrapping an egg in the wet silk swatch. (Photo Credit: Mary)

Then wrap the silk wrapped egg in a piece of muslin and put a twist tie around the top to hold it tight. The muslin helps prevent dyes from bleeding between one egg and another.

Put into a kettle of boiling/simmering water with 1/2 C white vinegar in it, for 20-25 minutes.

Scoop out the bundles and put in cool water till you can comfortably handle them.

Remove the twist tie (and thread, if any), and unveil your egg! You can blot off the moisture, then use vegetable oil to help bring out the design on the surface of your eggs.

The results of the egg that was being wrapped in the previous photo. That fabric resulted in the design on the egg in the center of the bottom row in the egg carton – the result being much prettier than you might expect given the fabric (dark with some amount of black in it)! (Photo Credit: Mary)

Darker and brighter colors transfer better than light or pale. We discovered one fabric that had been (mis-) marked as 100% silk that was actually a blend, and transferred very little color. A burn test showed it was probably a poly-silk blend (icky burned silk smell with little synthetic melted balls on the edges). However, a different fabric that was silk-cotton blend transferred well, though it had light colors in the print and would have been light even if it were all silk. You can experiment with trimming the fabric to lie flat on the egg, or scrunching it to make a wavier pattern. A retired science teacher in one class suggested experimenting with longer time in the water or higher concentration of vinegar. Lots of ways to experiment, and variations in design.

Enjoy!

~Mary

If you have any questions regarding this project, please send us an e-mail at fabricdfw@gotfabric.com. We’ll pass them on to Mary for you.

We’d love to see your creations if you give this a shot! Have a wonderful Easter and we’ll see you soon!